Why are we one of the few industry’s who are not paid by the manufacturer for warranty repairs. I know the repair tech gets paid, but what about for our time to remove & reinstall the component? And in some cases the installation & setup of a loaner.

How can we expect the homeowner to pay another service bill to remove/reinstall an A/V receiver after 6 or 8 months?
It’s one thing if it only happens once in a blue moon, but when you have to replace just about every receiver from a major manufacturer, this becomes a big cost to us.
I won’t name names here…you know who you are.But seriously, how about taking care of us?
Jason

While I agree with you in part.  If you are really using a brand that has that high of failure then maybe you should look at a different brand.  We’ve dropped several manufactures over the years that couldn’t get their act together on the QA side.

This is certainly one of our challenges.  Setting customer expectations so that we don’t end up having to absorb the time is important.  But no matter how good you are, situations arise where you know that you have to help the client and eat it.  Sure it would be nice if that tab would get picked up by someone else - fat chance of that happening.  If you can get setup as a warranty repair center for specific brands, then you could get paid for the work - but that opens up an WHOLE new set of issues.  Many brands expect you to carry inventory of common parts - some of them have steep minimum requirements.  For most integration companies, it just doesn’t make sense to take on those expenses.  We’re better off figuring out some percentage of time that we have to build into our billing to cover these situations.

Of coarse, these days most businesses are content with keeping sales coming in at a discounted rate - let alone increasing pricing.

If it were easy, everyone would do it.  Now let’s get back out there and make some happy customers sign some checks!

I always add a little more to all my larger projects such as 2-8% just in case of course this may not fully cover a full replacement but how often do you have to go back if something is done right.  After adding up all those 2-8% from all the projects it could add up to thousands of dollars which you can put away when the real storm rolls in.  And as said before drop any unreliable companies.  We do a lot of CCTV projects and we do not use any cheaply produced equipment anymore because the cheap stuff when used usually lasts 6-12 months and then we would have to go back and replace it not to say that sometimes doesnt happen with the expensive stuff.  We warn customers that buy cheaply made equipment that it may fail and tell them we will not be covering those items and they would usually purchase it on their own and have us install it.